I remember when I have connected to IRC back in 1996.such exciting times.we had only 5 internet access points in my town so you have to waaaaaaaaait.I have met many cool people on croatian irc server and on undernet,too.Met my first gf there in 1997. I am really nostalgic about those times. unfortunatly croatian IRC server doesn't exist anymore and undernet is mostly dead.I whish I have a time machine so I could get back in 90s and enjoy.internet sux these days and I am old.almost 49.

I live in a terminal these days, and every IRC client there is perfectly good and nothing like mIRC. So I made trout. It has the switchbar, the treebar, nicklist popups, the Address Book, Ctrl+K colors and those gray Windows 98 dialogs. The features you loved, and a few you hated. Slapping people around with a large trout is coming as soon as I find the right fish.

Full disclosure: I used to write TUIs by hand with ncurses and lost whole weekends to off-by-one borders. This time Claude Code did the pixel pushing while I complained about the shade of gray. Best division of labor I've had.

To be clear, this isn't trying to be the best terminal IRC client. It's a nostalgia project that happens to work. It goes through a soju bouncer, and if you don't have one it'll set one up for you, even on a Hetzner or DigitalOcean box (my referral link, fair warning), or on Google Cloud's always-free tier (you still pay Google about $3.65 a month for the IPv4).

trout --demo lets you poke around without connecting anywhere.

https://github.com/MaxRenaud/trout

-root- [Global Notice 1/3] We are moving past legacy freenode to a new fork. The new freenode is launched. You will slowly be disconnected and when you reconnect, you will be on the new freenode. We patiently await to welcome you in freedom's holdout - the freenode.

-root- [Global Notice 2/3] If you're looking to connect now, you can already /server chat.freenode.net 6697 (ssl) or 6667 (plaintext). It's a new genesis for a new era. Thank you for using freenode, and Hello World, from the future. freenode is IRC. freenode is FOSS. freenode is freedom.

-root- [Global Notice 3/3] When you connect, register your nickname and your channel and get started. It's a new world. We're so happy to welcome you and the millions of others. We will be posting more information in the coming days on our website and twitter. Otherwise, see you on the other side!

Wanted to share this with my fellow (ex)IRC friends:

https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally

Hope these changes like ID and age verification will cause a huge IRC comeback :)

Late 90's IRC Simulator running with LM Studio

Been feeling a bit nostalgic and made a late 90's IRC simulator fed by LM Studio running a fully local LLM (works best with 4-8B non-reasoning models).

You can join arbitrary channels, and there are a few active personas (each with their own quirks/personalities customizable via personas.ini) which are run by the LLM. The personas in channel will contextually interact with you, each other (kinda), and recognize when they're being addressed, all with that late 90's-era vibe and lingo. If you know, you know!

To round it out, there are lurkers, random kicks, trout slapping, +ops, joins, leaves, topic changes (LLM-driven, based on channel name), quits, netsplits, k-lines, etc. The event frequencies can be adjusted for a more chaotic, or more chill feel. Fire up your WinAmp and enjoy the vibe.

There's also a little RPG arc! After a bit of lurking and messaging, you will get a cryptic message from a user who suspects that something is a bit off about you.. like you're from somewhere, or some*time* else. After the successful story-driven narrative, you unlock a character-confidant to chat with in a private message.

For those who want to download and try it yourself: GitHub

Edit: I should mention, this is a web-based javascript app that mimics the look of mIRC, not bots running inside mIRC on a closed server or anything. This is completely offline

which servers/channels are u active in? i need ideas

After ~25 years I decided to jump back into IRC out of pure nostalgia. Back when convos started with a/s/l and mIRC was always running in the background. Any servers or channels worth checking today if you want that old-school vibe, not modern Slack-like stuff? Just looking to feel the old climate again :) sorry if it’s a dumb qestion.

Hello everyone! I've been making FOSS apps and posting them on reddit for about 10 years now and I am back with another one...

After all that business with Discord making people unhappy, I decided to return to my roots and start using IRC again instead of Discord. Pretty quickly I cycled through a few clients, namely The Lounge and then Weechat, both left me feeling wanting in different ways, so I built my own client. I've received a lot of positive feedback from people I hang out with on Libera.Chat so I think I've built something really special.

Quick summary: Lurker is a self-hosted multi-user IRC client very similar to The Lounge, with looks and customization inspired by WeeChat.

https://github.com/amiantos/lurker

Here's some stuff that I think makes Lurker special...

• Very good looking, highly customizable (but you probably won't need to)

• Feels very snappy

• Support for a lot of IRCv3 features like typing notifications, and MONITOR for seeing online/offline state of DM buffers

• Modern chat client features: message drafts (across devices, just like slack); paste to upload images (with optimization step to make images friendly for irc); intelligent tab nick completion (it ranks by most recent speaker, so less chance for errors); Cmd+K quick jump between buffers; fast functional search / filtering of your message history and highlights

• Web push notifications for the highlight system, with accurate client tracking so you do not get push notifications if you're active in any client, etc. This also powers an auto-afk/away system.

• Responsive PWA with unique chat layout for mobile and desktop.

• In the future: native iOS and Android clients (my FOSS bread and butter is iOS app development, so no unexpected challenges here)

Additionally, feedback I kept receiving on IRC about Lurker was "this is really great but I don't want to host it myself", so I spent a couple weeks spinning up a Lurker.Chat service for people who do not want to self-host. The FOSS client is the same client Lurker.Chat is running, there's no special features between the two of them, and your data bundle is transferrable between both (so you could use self-hosted and switch to Lurker.Chat and then back to self-hosted if you wanted).

Feel free to stop by the #lurker channel on Libera.Chat to say hello to the users who have been testing lurker, and ask me all about it.

:)

Like anyone who got the Internet for the first time in 1995, IRC was a formative internet experience. I'm more and more interested in chat communities that aren't corporate, where our communities don't live and die at the whim of a faceless company and "Trust & Safety" team. So what's the state of IRC in 2025? How used is it still? What's changed and hopefully improved in the past 20-25 years? Thanks!

How can we reinvent #IRC and make it an attractive protocol? We'll discuss it on 14/05/2025 on https://zeolia.chat/canaux/ircday.html

French : Comment réinventer #IRC et en refaire un protocole qui attire ? On en discute le 14/05/2025 sur https://zeolia.chat/canaux/ircday-fr.html

Is IRC officially dead or you guys are still using those geeky looking chats to friends. Honestly I could use it but whom will I talk to ? The max I did in irc is talking to myself from another terminal !!

am 43 years old nowaday, and i remember my time in old school session in MIRC ircqnet, floods, psybnc, bouncers, bitchx, spoof, litmus, dsnx,rbot, autospreading bot, irc zombie bots, ddos,ssh, telnet.....do you remember that time ?

The content here has been removed. Redact was used for the deletion, which may have been motivated by privacy, opsec, or preventing automated data collection.

dinner memorize hunt innocent voracious chase snatch modern plucky chunky

Simplicity? The protocol? The culture? Decentralization? Want to get the Reddit take

W, Undernet’s original Channel Service, has made a temporary return alongside X, marking its 30-year birthday in 2025!

Channel managers can now invite W to their channel and enjoy some nostalgia with this old channel service 😎

https://undernet.org/news/w-birthday-return

Come join us in the celebration on your IRC client. irc.undernet.org and join #undernet

Or check out our servers: https://undernet.org/servers.php

Hey there! Was trying to find IRC clients made with bubbletea out there but they all felt a bit outdated, so this is my contribution to the community. It's completely free and open source.

Grab it at: https://github.com/babycommando/zuse

Hope you like it ::)

EFnet channel #friends had a meet-up and went so far as to create a tee shirt to memorialize it. I wonder if any of those people still have their tee shirt hanging around. :)